On the later phase of Elamite-Iranian language contact

Résumé En

It is generally believed that Persian tribes migrated to the Iranianplateau in the late second millennium BCE, at a time when the region had longbeen under the sway of an Elamite population. Because of the location ofPersian settlements in the Iranian plateau, contact between Iranians and thelocal Elamite people was inevitable. Persian and Elamite populations were incontact for up to 500 years before the emergence of the Achaemenid PersianEmpire in the former eastern Elamite territories. The Elamite language wasadopted and strongly reshaped by speakers of Old Iranian, who probablyacquired Elamite as a second language for the purpose of writing and perhapsfor communication with native Elamites. The latest documented phase of theElamite language is known as (royal) Achaemenid Elamite. The nature of theimpact of Old Iranian on it goes beyond the adoption of loanwords, and includesmorphological restructuring. The main body of evidence for this evolution comesfrom a considerable collection of clay tablets written in Elamite that constitutesthe Persepolis Fortification Archive dated the reign of Darius I. Based on theseconsiderations, the present paper will discuss examples of language contactbetween Persians and Elamites. This paper analyzes the Old Persian andElamite versions of multilingual royal inscriptions in the Achaemenid royalnecropolis, Naqsh-e Rostam in order to further elucidate the nature of languagecontact between Old Iranian and Elamite.